Truth and Honor (REMASTERED)
by Kaiser Bonaparte
Summary: Abandoned by her caravan, Althea was lost and alone in the wild. When she is rescued by a mysterious stranger, she is thrown into something much larger than simply finding her way home, something that may just determine the fate of the entire world. (Remastered and Rewritten Version)


**Guess what bitches, I'm back! After a two year hiatus, I have returned to correct my cringy sins concerning this absolute banger of a story! This version is not only completely rewritten, but** ** _will_** **be completed!**

 **Enjoy, and thank you for those who supported me on the first run!**

This was it. Within the next few minutes, I would never have to worry about anything ever again. No more chasing down my rowdy cousins. No more mashing up my grandmother's potatoes before lunch.

And no more wandering in the forest, starving, tired and completely lost.

None of the tedious nuances of existing, because at any second, my life would come to an end.

"Get up!"

Someone was shouting, but I was perfectly comfortable where I was, thank you very much.

I heard a great deal of clattering and smacking. I braced myself for the sweet release of death. Sure, my family would miss me, but with thirteen of us, they could manage without me. In fact, they would probably be better off...

I heard footsteps and realized it had gone silent. A boot nudged my side, indicating that it _wasn't_ a monster. They weren't picky when they laid eyes on lost girls lying in the forest.

I cracked an eye open, both grateful and faintly disappointed to discover another person standing over me. It was a man, though I couldn't make out much more than the fact that he was very tall.

"Still alive?" he asked bluntly.

I exhaled heavily.

"Y-yeah." I groaned and sat up, rubbing my aching arms. My palms were dusty and scraped. I was exhausted.

"Where are you from?" the man asked. I chewed my lip; the irony was excruciating. I was supposed to die here. Where was this mysterious stranger days ago when my caravan left me?

At this point, I was so tired that I didn't even care about finding my way home. And considering _how_ I ended up stranded...

"Cospern. I'm from Cospern," I said miserably.

"That's three weeks north of here," the man replied tensely. "And you're going the wrong way."

"I know," I murmured. The man was silent for a moment; I could feel him staring at me in the dark. It occurred to me that he could take me and do whatever he wanted with me, whether it be to sell me into slavery, kill me and loot my corpse, or things worse than death.

I was hundreds of chunks from any sort of city; the only people out here were criminals and traveling caravans. Which meant no one was around to witness whatever he decided to do to me.

I heard a soft hum, then watched the man open his inventory. From it, he took several loaves of bread, then set them on the ground in front of me.

I looked up at him. He was going to help me? Maybe he was going to help me get home. Maybe there was hope of seeing my family again, of—

"Cospern is that way." At that, he turned and vanished into the darkness.

Maybe not.

I took the bread and ate it miserably, watching the ten little hearts at the bottom of my vision begin to fill. The scrapes on my hands closed up. The bruises on my knees no longer felt sore.

Well, at least I would die healthy. It was still the middle of the night, and while I couldn't _hear_ any monsters, they would be back. I had nothing in my inventory—when I was with the caravan, there was no reason to store any supplies—save for some reading material. But what good was classic literature against a pack of skeletons? I supposed I could mock them in verse before they loaded me full of arrows.

"Wait!" I cried, leaping to my feet and sprinting in the direction I saw the stranger go. I stumbled over bracken and forest refuse, snapping twigs and branches as I went. "Wait! St—"

A hand suddenly snapped over my mouth. A pair of arms jerked me off my feet and pulled me into a hollow created by two trees.

"Do you want every creeper in a five chunk radius coming after us?" a voice hissed in my ear. It belonged to the stranger.

I tugged at his hand with the arm that he didn't have pinned. Slowly, he removed his hand from my face, but didn't release me.

"You have to help me," I told him in a hush, my breath constricted in his grip.

"I already did," he replied. "Now _scram_." He let me go then, and I crashed to the forest floor. He stepped over me and strode into the night, oddly quiet for a man of his size.

"I don't have any weapons," I called.

"I don't care," he told me. I got up and followed him, trying my best to walk quietly.

"Then why did you save me?" I retorted.

"I'm starting to wonder that myself," he replied bitterly.

"Please, I can't stay out here all night." If I wasn't so desperate, I probably would have been angry with him.

The man stopped, and I nearly bumped into his back. He turned around, pulled a stone sword out of his inventory.

"There. Now climb up a tree and stay there until morning. If I see you again, _I'll_ cut your head off. Bye-bye." He patted my head twice, then stormed off.

I watched him go, wondering if he was serious about killing me. But by the time I came to a decision, he was long gone, and I was left with no other choice than to take his advice.

Unfortunately, trees aren't very comfortable. But as long as I kept quiet, monsters would pass right underneath me without knowing I was there.

Morning came with cramps, aches and a hazy overcast sky. When I was sure the mobs retreated to the dark places of the world, I crept down from the tree and struck out in the direction the man had indicated—hopefully.

In truth, I had gotten a bit turned around in the dark, but I figured that it wouldn't help my luck to be pessimistic. Considering that the night before I had all but given up on life, I figured it would boost my karma to keep my chin up.

Then it started to rain.

Typically, I loved rain. But that was back when I had a roof over my head, a cup of coffee in hand and a stack of books to be read.

Now, I had nothing but that beat-up sword and the clothes on my back, both of which were dripping wet.

I was so cold that one of the hearts in my vision went dark; if I kept going without warming up, I would keep losing hearts until I died. I carried on, looking for an overhang or hollow to take cover in.

I almost cried when the forest broke, giving way to a massive open plain. Not out of despair, but out of relief.

There was a church steeple reaching out of the gloom. A settlement, meaning food, shelter and a place out of the rain.

But then, I realized that it wasn't a human town.

Human settlements always had walls around them to keep out the mobs. This one didn't, which meant that either monsters didn't come here, or that this was an NPC Village.

No one knew what NPCs were. According to the scientific community, NPC stood for "Not Precisely Classified." I'd only read about them in books, but the blurry photographs of them I'd seen had given me nightmares as a child. The only thing we knew about them was that they weren't human.

But I was twenty-two years old...surely, I'd conquered my fear of them in my adult life. Besides, it was getting dark, and I wasn't in any particular mood to spend another night in a tree.

I squared my shoulders and made for the steeple in the gloom. The cobblestone church was surrounded by a series of neat, immaculate houses and wooden boxes with crops growing in them.

I yelped when I saw the first NPC. It was staring at me from the shadow of the church, drab brown robes soaked through. Its hands were concealed in its sleeves. The rain dripped down its tall, bald head and caught in a dark unibrow that sheltered its unblinking green eyes. Its nose was large and fleshy-looking, hanging down over its mouth like a balloon filled part way with water.

It didn't move. It just kept staring at me.

"C-Can you help me?" I asked timidly. I wondered if it even spoke the same language as I did.

"I am a farmer." I flinched when it spoke. "I will trade thirteen bundles of wheat for one emerald."

"Um..." I said. "Can I have a place to stay?"

"I am a farmer. I will trade thirteen bundles of wheat for one emerald," it repeated. Its voice was nasally and sort of jolly, but its flat, deadpan expression made the exchange unsettling.

I glanced at the crops growing in the planter boxes.

"W-will you give me a place to stay if I trade with you?"

It repeated the same mantra, so I hesitantly crept towards the planters, glancing over my shoulder to see if the NPC was going to follow me. It just stood there, watching me like some kind of freaky, green-eyed bird.

I decided that they weren't quite as terrifying as my childhood self had made them out to be. They were definitely weird, but not scary.

I climbed onto the edge of the planter box, then opened my inventory.

The inventory was one of the world's greater mysteries. When opened, a person had access to their own pocket of space that they could use for storage or crafting. It showed a sort of picture interface in the air, displaying slots for items or tools, and a small icon of a person that allowed for armor and trinkets to be applied. If in the inventory, the items couldn't be retrieved unless its owner was killed.

The sound of opening it was different for everyone; mine sounded like tinkling glass or small bells. I stood in front of one section of wheat growing in the planter, then held out a wet, shaking hand. A perfectly square section of the plant disappeared, then reappeared in designated sections of my inventory as a bundle of wheat and two handfuls of seeds.

I did this twelve more times, collecting enough to meet the NPCs fee. Unfortunately, there was an energy cost to using the inventory for extended period of time and by the time I was done, I was so tired that I was about to pass out. It had grown dark, and I was so cold that my whole body shook. Another heart had drained away.

I hurried back to the NPC and once more accessed my inventory. I touched the icon indicating the thirteen bundles of wheat, then dragged it to the outside margins of the interface.

The NPC's own inventory blipped (I was surprised to discover that they had an inventory at all). The wheat appeared in the corner of its interface. I heard a small pop, and a glittering green emerald appeared in my own.

"Now can I please get somewhere to stay?" I asked. To my absolute indignation, the NPC opened its lipless mouth and said,

"I am a farmer. I will trade thirteen bundles of wheat for one emerald."

"What?" I cried. "I did that already!" The NPC only watched me and repeated the only phrase it appeared to know.

"You should have saved that wheat for bread," a new voice piped.

I whirled around and saw a man leaning beneath the eaves of a house, arms crossed over his chest. He looked different in the dim of the buildings, but I recognized the stranger that had rescued me from monsters, then promptly abandoned me in the woods.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I was about to ask you the same thing. Cospern is _north_ of here. Unless you're so completely incapable of finding your way that you can't take basic directions," he replied. He was watching me in a way that seemed even more disturbing than the NPC's unblinking glare.

"You know, I was actually just leaving," I said, unsettled. There was still a chance that I could find a warm, dry hole in the ground to curl up in. Or maybe I would end up ripped to shreds by mobs.

Either way, I didn't particularly want to stay with the strange man. I started out into the darkness but was stopped short when an arrow whizzed past my head.

I yelped and staggered backwards, narrowly dodging another shot. I could see shadows flickering in the night.

"You still want to go out there?" the man remarked from his place beneath the eaves. He shifted and walked to the door, then stepped inside the house.

I bit my lip and looked back after him, then hastily followed him.

The inside of the house was made up of one completely empty room. A stone counter occupied the back part of the room, and behind it was a door leading outside.

The man had placed a crafting table and a furnace against the wall. He sat near the furnace, rubbing his hands together to warm them.

"It's a miracle you're still alive," he remarked, still watching me. His eyes were the clearest blue I'd ever seen in a person, but the force of his gaze made me squirm.

His height had been the first thing I had noticed about him, but in the warm light of a torch I could finally see him clearly. He was muscular, with deeply tanned skin and rough hands. He wore battered jeans, an untucked cyan-colored shirt and a pair of scuffed grey boots. His face was lean, his features hard and angular. A mop of dark brown hair fell in his eyes, and a short beard obscured his jaw.

I sat down against a wall with a wet squelch, drawing my knees up to my chest. For a while, I tried to meet his stare head on. Then, I gave up and stared at my legs.

"Yeah," I mumbled. "Yeah it is."

It was true. I'd been wandering for days, and it was completely inconceivable that I had survived. But, here I was. Alive because of a man I'd never met before.

"Why did you save me again?" I asked, a spike of annoyance rising in my chest as I remembered how quickly he'd ditched me last time.

"Let's just say folks like you aren't supposed to run into folks like me more than once," the man replied cryptically. The hair on my arms stood on end, as if someone were watching me.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" I demanded quietly. The man regarded me analytically, then sat up a bit. He didn't take his eyes off of me, but his expression softened into something less intimidating.

"What's your name?" he asked. I glared at him.

"What's it to you?" I groused, shivering where I sat. He frowned.

"I thought that it was polite," he snorted. "I figured if I'm going to bring you back to Cospern, I may as well know your name."

"Bring me back to Cospern? Why would I let someone like you—"

"Because you have a target on your back now. You were lucky before, but without me to help you, you may as well walk back out there and let that skeleton stick you now."

I opened my mouth to make some kind of reply, but nothing came out. I met his eyes and caught a fleeting glimpse of something in his face. I didn't quite know what it was, but I saw it once as a child in the eyes of a militiaman returning from combat. It was as angry as it was sad and as deep as it was lonely, and it faded in the time it took to blink.

"My name is Althea. Althea Laughlin," I finally told him. He gave a soft _humph_ , faintly shrugging his shoulders. I glowered at him, but he cut me off before I could snap at him.

"'She Who Speaks Truths,'" he remarked absently.

"What?"

"Your name," he continued. "It's a Valkyrie name that means 'She Who Speaks Truths.'"

"Well what about you?"

"Me? You can call me Steve."

"And I bet that means 'He Who is an Ass.'" I crossed my arms, shivering. It was warmer in the house, but I was still sopping wet and completely exhausted.

He grunted, annoyed and amused.

"Actually, it means 'Rescuer of Directionally-Challenged Women.' Now, eat and try to get some rest. We leave at sunrise."


End file.
